


for the birds

by explodinganyway



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, POV Second Person, Paintball, Season 1, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 13:02:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1267507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explodinganyway/pseuds/explodinganyway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you wanted to help and you wanted to be wanted and these were a conflict of interest; were on chairs above lava and wielding a sword. You want everyone to be happy but you want them to need you and you don’t know how to justify both things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for the birds

**Author's Note:**

> I started this at the start of this year before the new season but was surprised to find some of the things I wrote addressed in the new season! anyway, this is kind of shabby but I felt the need to get back into Britta's brain, into the way she copes (or doesn't cope) with things and this is the result. the grammer (or lack of) was intentional because the thoughts I wanted to express weren't coming out with capitals so I'm sorry if that really annoys you to read but I definitely think that /style/ is similar to how Britta's mind runs off.

_I want to_   
_I want to be someone else or I'll explode_

_Floatin' upon this surface for the birds,_   
_The birds_

_/_

you picture the study group as a pack of cards; know you need to fix them but you don’t know how. you feel like you’re missing something―a piece that everyone else maybe has, a piece that will help you help everyone else. It’s something close to control and anyway, you were never very good at just letting the chips fall. So throw them away.

you wanted to help and you wanted to be wanted and these were a conflict of interest; were on chairs above lava and wielding a sword. You want everyone to be happy but you want them to need you and you don’t know how to justify both things. You know you will have to choose one eventually but―throw the chips away.

you play more poker than you really should and haven’t learnt from the way your face blossoms like spring and so you keep losing. That’s a lie; you’re not that bad, and you’re even better when you’re playing against a group of men and your stand-off-ish behaviour and your low cut shirt can count for a lot. (you have a collection of ties in your wardrobe from how these nights usually end. you keep them until it feels gross―like some sort of psycho sex-crazed egomaniac―and then you get rid of them. and yes to goodwill and not the trash.)

you know your cards and you know the chips; just don’t quite have a grasp on what you’re betting with. you bet your chips, your clothes, your money, your body, your life. you lose track of it all, of what you’re losing by staring into a pair of hearts, hoping for a better outcome than possible.

/

the study group is the hand you have been dealt and you don’t know how to solve them. you can bluff with the best and you do this until they start to see past the cracks. smoking weed helps and for a few weeks you forget to have a sober day. going to Greendale stoned helps though, and soon after you crash in some seedy bar and end up back at your place with someone you forgot the name of, you get your head on straight. you don’t know how to fix things but you are determined to be the biggest wreck of the group. (they criticize you endlessly during the day and when you’re at a club with vodka in your system, the words slide off like oil. most nights you make it back to your place but a few times you’ve had to try and make your piece of shit phone locate you first.)

it’s not a way to live though.

/

your spine is a bird, is bursting out of your skin and you know this feeling. you have felt this a week before you were in New York, a month before Africa, and every stop in between. you’re not the kind of person who works well in one place. this is the truth, you feel as if you are tied to the study group by thick rope, just you guys and a pack of cards. you want to run, need it, feel it right in the spaces between your bones. it’s what you do, it’s who you are, and Greendale has been―more. more than you thought was possible. you think you should quit while you’re disastrously behind.

/

you’ve always been a wreck trying to prove you’re not. it’s how you live your life from one place to the next; trying as hard as you can to selflessly help people until you feel good about yourself. you think about that though; how your helping people makes you feel better and so you think that it isn’t really selfless at all. you keep giving more: more time, more possessions, more money, more of yourself, until you are forced to go back to where you grew up (there’s a lightness in your chest though, a lightness that comes from giving until you’re used up and that lightness makes you happy. you realise then that no matter how you go about it, you will always be selfish and so your life runs in vicious circles.)

you act compassionate because you are afraid that you’re not and those words still stick in your mind to this day, sit right next to the way Jeff looked at you and then looked away as if meeting your eyes burned him. you are a bad person and that’s why you slept with him, fucked him on the study table and didn’t think about how it would affect anyone, least of all yourself.

except that’s not the whole story.

the whole story is far longer than you can be bothered to tell―starts back when you were eleven and how you’ve needed men to look at you a certain way ever since. you don’t define yourself by men, you’d be a pretty sucky feminist if you did, it’s just that there’s something inside you that you can still feel―like scar tissue forming over the wound and there’s no way to fix that, only ways to distract yourself.

you thought that Jeff might save you; or at least you thought you could save yourself by sleeping with Jeff and those two things are very different. you didn’t though; instead it was two messed up people coming together too hard and too fast and the glaring insecurities you had almost being overshadowed by his. instead it was Jeff’s laugh at the nail polish on your toes turning into a groan as you sank down on him and the realisation that his arms actually were as strong as they looked.

it wasn’t bad but it was just sex.

in the end, these things always are.

eventually you forget the way Jeff clenched his eyes shut when he came, like looking at anything, like looking at you would undo him. you forget how you kept looking ahead until his fingers found you; fast and determined, forget if you even made a sound as you came―eyes still wide open and staring through the study room windows.

/

you don’t have any revelations but it doesn’t matter because your life has taught you that revelations just bring you back to the same place anyway, eventually. Greendale has made you forget that reinventing yourself never works out and so the next day you try to pretend it all never happened. you think it will be easy when Jeff pulls paint from your hair and the only thing you feel is the pressure. there’s nothing in your chest, no feelings in your heart and this you know how to deal with.

you smile at him out the corner of your eye and the birds that you feel inside your chest seem to be sated. you don’t know how you are going to explain that you only need to leave when things are going well but you don’t worry about it, just lay down the hand you are given on your sullied study table and wonder how much longer you can bluff your way through.

/

_You want me?_   
_Fuckin' well, come and find me._

_I'll be waitin'_

_With a gun and a pack of sandwiches,  
_ _And nothin'_

 


End file.
